In any information technology infrastructure deployment, it is necessary to install and customize hardware elements such as data processing system servers and clients, as well as a wide variety of other specialized equipment.
As part of such deployment, it is typically necessary to install operating systems and other software on each data processing system. Generally, the data processing system is customized to the customer or enterprise, so that the specific required operating system, installed applications, and other features will work consistently throughout the enterprise. While some individual data processing systems may have particular requirements, is it often the case that many have an identical custom base build installed on them. For example, all typical employee workstations for an enterprise may require the same basic software installation and common configuration.
Installing and configuring the operating system, applications, and other software elements on each deployed data processing system can be time intensive and expensive. Further, on manual installs, there is a significant possibility of deviations in the configurations of different machines. There is, therefore, a need in the art for an improved system, method, and computer program product for software installation and retention of configurations for future change management.